No Rest for the Wicked
by fierathefangirl
Summary: Eva knew exactly what she was getting into when she sold her soul to save Sam Winchester. Or at least, she thought she did. But more trouble is brewing in hell than she or the Winchesters could have ever anticipated.
1. Chapter 1

_The story deviates from canon somewhere in season 6, when Eva joins forces with the Winchesters. They hunt alphas and defeat Eve together, and are betrayed by Cas. When Cas releases the souls back into Purgatory, he never wakes up like he does in canon and the Leviathans are never released into the world. Like in canon, the barrier in Sam's mind between his soul and his memories of hell is broken, and eventually Hallucifer gets to the point where Sam can't get him to leave, and he ends up in the mental hospital like he did in 7x17, The Born-Again Identity, but Dean doesn't find Emmanuel like he does in the actual episode._

* * *

In northern Indiana, there's a place where two dirt roads cross. It's insignificant, just like the hundreds of other crossroads that litter the state, but at the moment, it's a glowing beacon. Not to the humans around it, but to the red-eyed demons scouring the earth for deals to make and souls to reap.

I'm the one who lit the beacon. By burying a small box in the center of the crossroads, filled with my ID and an assortment of small items that were easy to find. It seems strange that so much can hinge on such a small thing. This one box is the start of something that will cost me my soul.

It doesn't take long before the demon shows up. She's the epitome of sexy: silky black hair draped over her shoulder, a short (tight) black dress, high lace-up boots. If I'd seen her at a bar, if the situation were different, I'd probably try hitting on her.

But it's not, so I don't.

"Well, what do we have here?" the demon asks. Her smooth voice is as alluring as her appearance.

"I want to make a deal," I say flatly, trying to seem uninterested in the attractiveness of the demon before me.

She rolls her eyes. "Typical. Always straight to the point. Okay, give me a name and I'll give you a deal."

"Eva," I say through gritted teeth, starting to get impatient. I was hesitant to even leave Sam behind and come out here, and it's making me uneasy that it's taking so long already.

"Alright, Eva," the demon says, sauntering slowly towards me. "What can I do for you?"

"I need you to save Sam Winchester."

The demon's eyes light up mischievously. "A Winchester! Always making deals. You guys are hell's best customers, you know that?"

I ignore her jab, even though it's true. "He's been having hallucinations ever since the wall between him and his memories of the pit broke, and it's… it's gotten worse. He hasn't slept in days. He's not going to make it much longer if he doesn't get help, and soon."

The demon cocks her head and smiles. "I'm sure I can take care of that. And you know the price?"

I nod. In my line of business, it's not really something you can't know. "My soul. In ten years."

The demon laughs. "Ten years? Oh, no, honey, for a friend of the Winchesters, we're going to expect payment much sooner. Say… a month?"

My stomach drops. I'd expected a negotiation, but this is ridiculous. Most people got ten years. Even Dean had gotten one. But a _month?_ What the hell am I supposed to do with a month? "A year," I say quietly. "Just give me a year."

"One month or no deal," the demon says, the corner of her mouth curling up almost in a mocking cruelty.

I hesitate. We can find some other way to cure Sam, to piece back together his broken mind…

_But there's no time_, part of me says. How long could a human survive without sleep before their exhausted system starts shutting down? And if that doesn't kill him, it would be something else. At some point, he'd kill _himself_ if he got the chance. Lucifer—the image of him, anyway—is driving Sam completely out of his mind.

"Fine," I spit out, trying to sound brave despite the fact that I'm terrified. One month. I have _one month._ "A month. You have a deal."

"Great," says the demon cheerfully, as if she wasn't signing a deal to send a soul to eternal torment.

She leisurely closes the remaining distance between us before pressing her lips to mine. I remain as still as possible, unwilling to give this demon any pleasure from the process of sealing a deal.

She steps back with a disappointed look on her face. "You'd be such a great kisser if you didn't resist so much," she says, shaking her head. After a moment, she adds, "That's it then. One month in return for the restoration of your boyfriend's mind."

"He's not—" I start to say, but she's already gone.


	2. Chapter 2

I let out a huff and climb into my black 1970 Chevy Camaro. It had been a piece of shit, barely able to get from place to place like I needed it to, until I'd joined up with the brothers and Dean had fixed it up for me.

_Dean_. He's going to be so pissed. He'll probably kill me before the hellhounds do. What do I even do? Tell him I sold my soul for his brother? I know he's done the same thing but he won't be so forgiving of my decision.

My thoughts race the entire way back to the mental hospital. About how fucked I am. About how Sam and Dean will react. About if I was wrong, if there really was some other way. And on top of it all, like a steady rhythmic hum, is the persistent thought of _one month one month one month._

I pull into the parking lot and hesitate. I don't want to go in. I'm not ready to face the brothers.

But I need to see if Sam's okay.

I climb out of my car slowly, my heart pounding with a mix of worry and eagerness. I push down the feeling and walk towards the front door of the building.

I'm let into Sam's room, and I pray Dean's not there as I walk in.

He's not. A wave of relief washes over me. Thank god.

But Sam is. He's sleeping peacefully on his cot, curled up on his side. His face is still scratched and gray from days without sleep, but the exhaustion is temporarily erased from his face.

"He's asleep," I breathe to the doctor.

"Yeah. Fell asleep about half an hour ago. Guess the sedatives finally kicked in," the doctor says.

"Do you mind if I stay here?" I ask quietly, nodding to the chair in the corner of the room.

"Of course," the doctor says, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him.

I pull the chair over to the bedside and sit down, watching Sam's sleeping face. I forget, for the time being, that I'll be going to hell in a month. I forget about everything, just watching the slow rise and fall of Sam's chest.

Sam and I have a special connection. Something like—well, something like Dean and his friend Castiel had had, before the angel had been killed by the souls he was using to save heaven. I love Sam, but I'm not _in love_ with him, contrary to Dean's teasing and the occasional sleeping together from time to time (I mean, come on, anybody would want to get a piece of Sam Winchester, I mean, have you _seen_ him without a shirt on?).

Dean comes in after about an hour. He has the smell of alcohol on him, so I can only guess he's been out drinking.

"He's asleep," Dean says in surprise more to himself than to me.

"Yeah," I say, glancing up at him.

"What happened?"

I shrug. "He fell asleep."

Dean finds another chair and pulls it up next to me. "You've been here since I left?" Dean asks.

"Yep," I lie. I nod at Sam. "He was sitting there in that trance-like state, looking over at where I guess he was seeing Lucifer and talking to the air every few minutes, and then he curled up and fell asleep."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

There's a few moments of silence. "It's gonna take a while for him to sleep all that off," Dean says. "That is, if there's nothing in his head to wake him up. We can probably go back to the motel."

I bite my lip, hesitant to leave Sam again. What I actually want is to spend the night, but it'll just end up being uncomfortable for me and unnecessary for Sam. He's safe here. Dean and I had filled the room with hex bags and put warding spells where we could to keep him protected from any enemies that might take the opportunity of Sam's vulnerability.

"Okay," I finally say getting to my feet and giving Sam a light kiss on the top of his head before following Dean out of the room and to the parking lot.

* * *

I'm sitting on my bed in almost complete darkness, watching a flickering TV screen show images of a missing girl, a murder, a massacre in some far-off country. I wonder if hell is going to be like what's the news channel is showing. Concentrated misery, one horrific image after the other until you can barely stand to look anymore.

Except in hell, there's no way out, _and_ you get to take part in the action.

A single teardrop is suddenly sliding down my cheek, reaching my chin and then dripping onto the fabric of my jeans. Then another teardrop, and another, and then I can't stop them anymore.

I can't face this alone.

Barely able to see through my tears, I manage to make it out of my room and to the door next to mine. I knock softly and the door opens a few moments later.

"Eva?" Dean asks. "Eva, what's wrong?"

I try to gain control of myself for a moment, and then burst into tears again. "E-everything," I sputter. "Everything's wrong."

Dean pulls me into the circle of his arms a little awkwardly. I'm sure he's not entirely used to dealing with sobbing women.

_Don't be so weak,_ a malicious voice in the back of my head says. _Stop crying._

I thought I'd lost that persistent voice a long time ago, when Sam and Dean had patched together my weathered and beaten soul. _The same soul that's going to hell_, the voice reminds.

_Shut up,_ I think back at it. _Crying isn't weak. Pain is not weakness._

"Shh, it's okay," Dean says, pulling me into the room and shutting the door behind me, still holding me tightly as my tears soak into his shirt. "It's okay," he repeats, rocking slightly and pressing his lips to the top of my head.

When I finally catch my breath enough to talk, I say, "I fucked up, Dean."

He doesn't immediately refute it, insist I couldn't have messed up so badly. No, he knows that when I say I fucked up, I really fucked up. It's not hard for something like that to happen with the life we live.

He just waits for me to explain further.

I let go of Dean and sit down on the edge of his bed. He follows and sits down next to me.

I take a deep breath. I don't have to tell him the truth now. I can make something up. _I don't want to travel with you and Sam anymore, I'm going my own way._ Or maybe, _I have terminal cancer. I'm dying in a month._ Or possibly even, _I feel like this is my fault. The Sam thing._ That would excuse my behavior but not put the truth out there.

All these options flash through my mind in an instant, but I finally blurt out, "I have a month."

"A month till what?" Dean asks, alarmed.

"Until my soul goes to hell," I say, my voice shrinking until the last bit of my sentence is almost inaudible.

"Eva, what did you do," Dean asks, his voice inflectionless but tense. "Please tell me you didn't—"

"I couldn't just watch Sam suffer!" I exclaim, my tone defensive. "His memories of Lucifer were going to kill him, one way or another, and I needed to save him."

"You didn't _need_ to do anything," Dean growls, anger in his voice where it had been soft and gentle only a minute before.

"It was my choice!" I almost shout. I'm getting angry too. He shouldn't be getting angry considering the things _he's_ done to save Sam. "Is it so much to ask you to respect my decision?"

"It was a stupid decision," Dean snapped.

"Well, at least now Sam's not having a, what was it, full-blown psychotic episode, if you hadn't noticed! Unless you had a better idea of how to fix him?"

Dean opens his mouth and then closes it.

His eyes flick away from yours and he clenches his jaw. "We'll figure something out. We've dealt with hellhounds before, we can keep them away from you."

I doubt it, but it makes me feel better that Dean would be at least willing to try.

"Thanks," I grumble. There's a charged silence. "I'll see you tomorrow morning," I finally mumble quietly, pushing myself to my feet and letting myself out.

I close the door behind me and lean against it, taking a deep breath. Tomorrow I'll have to deal with Sam. But that's a whole other problem, and worrying about it right now isn't going to do any good.


	3. Chapter 3

We pick Sam up the next morning and check him out of the hospital—well, maybe "check out" is a bit of a loose term, it was a lot closer to sneaking him out—and then our tiny two-car caravan is on it's way to the next town on our list, the one that Dean had found a case in. My world might be crumbling in on itself, but the rest of it just keeps on spinning. There's things to hunt, people to save.

We stop about half-way there to eat at a diner. Dean digs into his burger without saying a word, but Sam and I just pick at our meals. Sam still looks pretty terrible—exhausted and worn out, even after more than ten hours of sleep (which, with the life of a hunter, is actually a lot).

I probably appear almost as bad. I didn't get any sleep last night. How could I sleep with that much stress on my shoulders?

"It's weird," Sam says, absent-mindedly poking at his salad with his fork. "How Lucifer was suddenly just… gone."

"Any idea what happened to him?" Dean asks between bites of his burger.

"No," Sam says, shaking his head. There's a moment of silence between the three of us. "Did either of you…?" he finally says, looking between you and Dean suspiciously.

"Nope," I say quickly. "I'm just as confused as you are."

Dean gives me an irritated look and raises his eyebrows judgmentally as if to say, _Are you going to tell him?_

I shake my head very slightly at Dean. No way I'm telling Sam I sold my soul for him. At least, not now. Not in this dingy diner somewhere in the middle of Ohio. And not when he's still recovering from days without sleep.

"I guess we'll figure it out eventually," Sam says, dropping his fork onto his plate of salad and pushing it away from himself. "I'll go get some gas for the car, be back in five or ten minutes."

He slides out of the booth and leaves the diner to the sound of the ringing bell over the door.

"You have to tell him," Dean says in a hushed tone, leaning forward as soon as the door closes behind Sam.

"I'm not ready," I hiss. "_He's_ not ready."

"I think he'd rather know sooner rather than later that you have _one month_ to live!"

"I'm not ready," I repeat.

"Okay, so when _are _you going to tell him?" Dean asks.

I hesitate. I'd prefer not to tell him at all. Actually, what I'd prefer is to not be going to hell at all. But neither of those options are going to work. "I'm just going to wait until the right time."

"Which is when?" Dean demanded.

I huff in exasperation. "I don't know, okay? Just… just let _me_ tell him, all right? I don't want it to come from you."

Dean narrows his eyes, glaring at me intensely for a few seconds. "Fine," he finally says, dropping his napkin on the table next to his half-finished burger. "But you'd better tell him in the next week."

"_Okay,_" I grumble. "God, you nag as much as my mother."

"Yeah, well," Dean says, "At least I'm not the one lying to my boyfriend." He scoots out of the booth and tosses a couple bills on the table to pay for the food.

"Jesus, Dean, he's not my boyfriend!" I snap, following Dean out of the booth and into the parking lot.

"Deny it all you want, but I know better," he says in a matter-of-fact voice as we step out into the warm sun.

"I could say the same about you and Cas," I grumble.

"What?" Dean asks, casting me a look.

"Nothing," I reply, giving him my most innocent smile.

Sam pulls up in the Impala a few moments later and we climb in.

"Talk about anything interesting while I was gone?" he asks as we pull the doors shut.

"Nope," I say casually. "Nothing at all."

—

A week passes. We're on a case with a ghost, a case that's small and normal and comfortable. I don't know if I could deal with any more demons and their schemes. I guess I'll be seeing enough of them pretty soon anyway.

Not that Sam knows that. No, I still haven't told him. I thought about it once or twice but wussed out. I'm still not ready yet.

I know my seven day window is over when Dean stops me as we're getting out of the Impala to go inside the motel, sometime after dark when most of the motel rooms are darkened and the parking lot is lit only by the occasional wall lamp and the flickering lights from the neon sign twenty feet up, a red _VACANCY_ below it.

"You go on inside, Sammy, I need to talk to Eva about something," he tells Sam, who shrugs and heads towards the room, duffel bag in hand.

As soon as he's out of earshot, Dean says in an annoyed tone, "I gave you a week, Eva. Are you going to tell him, or what?"

I take a deep breath, shaking my head.

"So you're just going to wait until the hellhounds are coming for you for him to find out? Is that it?" He points towards the door to the motel room Sam is in and says, "I know my little brother, and the more you wait, the more it's going to hurt him. He's going to want to know how much time he has left with you."

"I _will_ tell him, just give me a few more days…"

"We both know that's just an excuse—" Dean starts, and then I hear from behind us, "Tell me what?"

Dean and I look up to see Sam standing there watching the two of us intently.

"Oh," I say in a surprise. I try to act as nonchalantly as I can. "Sam. What are you doing there? I thought you went inside."

"Forgot something in the car," he says dismissively. "But what were you going to tell me?"

"This one's all you," Dean says, slapping my shoulder and walking off back towards the motel. "Don't let her lie to you, Sammy!" he calls over his shoulder.

"Lie to me about what?" Sam asks me suspiciously.

Fuck. I don't think there's any way out of this one. I run a hand through my short hair nervously. "There's something I have to tell you."

"Uh, yeah, I got that," Sam says, his eyes still focused on me expectantly.

"I, uh, I…" I don't know how to even say this. "I was involved in getting your hallucinations to stop."

Sam watches me, completely frozen. I don't even think he's breathing. I know I'm not.

I take a deep breath and go on. "I made a deal."

Sam closes his eyes, a pained expression on his face. He knows I'm telling the truth. I couldn't lie about something like this. "How long?" he says quietly, eyes still closed. "A year? Like Dean?"

I'm paralyzed. I can't respond. The agony in his voice makes it impossible to speak.

His eyes open again and he looks at me. He doesn't say anything but the intensity on his face forces the words from my throat. "A month." It comes out barely more than whisper.

Sam turns away to conceal whatever emotion he's feeling, curses softly.

Finally he spins back around, his expression a mix of pain and anger. "Fuck, Eva!" he says, not loudly, and not angrily, but closer to disappointed. I think it's worse than just anger would have been. "It wasn't worth it. _I'm_ not worth it."

"Don't say that," I tell him, my voice low. "You're always worth it."

"Trading your life for mine? That's not heroic, Eva, that's selfish."

"Yeah, well, it's my decision and it's done now so you'll have to fucking deal, okay?" I snap at him.

Sam pauses, a scowl on his face. "And Dean knew?"

"I told him the first night," I say, trying to keep my voice calmer. "Because I was… because I didn't know what to do."

"How did he react?"

"He was really pissed too," I say.

Sam huffs a laugh. "Of course he was."

"He said he'll help keep hellhounds away when… when, you know."

A corner of Sam's mouth turns down in thoughtfulness. "We can try. I don't know if it will be enough."

"I know," I reply.

There's a pause, and then Sam steps forward and pulls me close to him, wrapping his strong arms around me. I usually hate being treated like this, like I'm not tough enough to hold myself together by myself, but now I return his hug without a word. I feel safe for now, in a world of danger, and it's such a relieving feeling.

"Thank you, Sam," I whisper.

"For what?" he murmurs back. "You're the one who traded your soul for my sanity. I haven't done anything."

"Thanks for sticking with me," I clarify.

There's a few moments of silence before he sighs, hugging me tighter, and whispers, "Of course. Always."


	4. Chapter 4

We finish the ghost case when I have two and half weeks left. The bones are salted and burned, and then we're onto the next town. Sam and Dean were against moving on to another case, insisting we spend the remaining time looking for a way out of my crossroads deal, but I didn't want to spend my last weeks on earth frantically looking for something that didn't exist. I'd rather spend it with the closest thing I had to a family, pretending until the last moment that everything was fine.

Of course, Sam and Dean weren't just going to let it drop, even though I knew it was hopeless.

"Anything besides killing the hellhounds that could get you out of this?" Sam asks absently, flipping through the book of lore in his lap with a flashlight on it as we drive through the early evening towards the new case in upstate New York. It's just him and me in my Camaro. Dean's just ahead of us, driving the Impala.

"Besides an angel, you mean?" I ask. Dean been saved from hell by an angel, the angel that ultimately became his best friend. I know Cas would help me out, too, anything for the Winchesters. It's too bad he was torn apart by the thousands of souls inside him before he could.

Any other angels we know? There's Balthazar. I'd met him, but Cas had killed him shortly after I had. Rachel, Cas's friend and lieutenant, had met the same fate. And the other minor angels I'd run across? All dead, or left powerless, or just somewhere far away, too busy dealing with the destruction caused in heaven (by Cas, actually) to help out someone they didn't know.

Angels are usually kind, but they're not _that_ kind, and I'm sure they'd say that since I'd gotten myself into this mess in the first place, they shouldn't help me out of it. And that's just the friendly angels. Quite a few of them have made enemies of the Winchesters.

Even the angel who'd taken Stephen—my boyfriend at the time—and used him as a vessel was gone, killed in the war between angels. I didn't find out until Cas had seen me standing next to Dean and Sam and sputtered it out breathlessly as his vessel fell apart around him.

The angel, Suriel, had been on Cas's side, back when Michael and Lucifer had first been locked away, but had died in one of the earlier skirmishes, back before Cas's goal had been to use the power of thousands of souls. Of course, I hadn't found that out until later.

It's probably a good thing he was gone early on. He was one of the lucky angels who didn't live to see his leader turn corrupt.

Not that I have any sympathy for the angel. He _did_ steal my boyfriend, flip my life on its head, and set me down this wild path of the supernatural that led me here: sitting in a fifty-year-old car with one seriously fucked-up guy, following his seriously fucked-up brother in his fifty-year-old car, and waiting out the short time before my soul is on its way to hell.

I'd be more concerned about Stephen than the angel, if anything. He's up in heaven now, though, I'm sure. I'm glad he's finally at peace. An angel using your body as a vessel is one helluva wild ride.

I should be sad, but I'm really not. I've had years to get over his being taken out of my life so suddenly, and in that time I've been forced to build the emotional toughness that comes with the job.

I wonder if Suriel would help me now, if he was still around. Would Stephen, if he was still in there somewhere, appeal to him? Ask him to save me from eternal damnation? Or would he have moved on from me the same way I have from him?

"So our best chance at dodging the deal is killing the hellhounds," Sam says, snapping me out of my memories.

I take a deep breath, letting myself catch up with the present. "Yeah, but hellhounds aren't exactly the easiest thing to kill. They _are_ invisible to us, in case you'd forgotten, and they're pretty fucking dangerous."

Sam clicks the end of his pen a few times in annoyance. "It's worth a shot."

I roll my eyes. It's always worth a shot for the Winchesters. No wonder they're in so much trouble all the time.

Half an hour later we pull into the parking lot of the motel in the town we're staying at, check in, and bring in our bags.

As usual, I'm in a separate hotel room, so Sam comes to knock on my door to ask where I want to go for dinner.

"I'd rather stay here. You guys bring me back a burger or something, okay?" I say as I fold up one of my t-shirts and set it on the bed with the others.

"You sure?" Sam asks.

"Yeah." After being stuck in a car with another person for who-knows-how-many hours straight, I need some alone time. A shower. Clean clothes. Maybe a nap.

Sam leaves and I glance out the window a few moments later to see the Impala pulling out of the parking lot.

Well, now's as good a time as any to get washed up. I root through my bag for my toiletries, my toothbrush and toothpaste and the few other things I bring with us everywhere to stay clean and hygienic.

My hand bumps against a box and I pull it out. Tampons.

Wait. When was my last period?

Fuck.

I count days in my head.

Two days late.

When could this have happened? I had my period last month as usual, and the only person I've been with since then is Sam. But the last time we hooked up was… about three weeks ago.

Fuck.

I crouch down next to my bag again and pull things out, trying to find what I'm looking for.

There it is, at the bottom: a couple of spare pregnancy tests from when I'd had a scare a couple months ago. I check the expiration date quickly, hands shaking. They won't expire for another year.

Good.

I slip into the bathroom and close the door behind me, locking it despite the fact that I'm alone.

The results of the test aren't what I want to see. Those two vertical lines are awfully small for something so big.

Fuck.

I pick up my phone and dial the familiar number for Sam's phone.

"Hello?" he says. I can hear Dean singing obnoxiously to music in the background.

"Hi, Sam," I say. It comes out more unsteady than I had intended it to.

"Is something wrong?" he asks. Dean hits a high note in the background and I can hear as Sam turns to his brother and tells him to shut up before talking into the phone again. "You sound nervous."

"What? No, nothing's wrong. I just called to…" I trail off uneasily. "Just get back soon, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," he says a little suspiciously. It's not hard to tell something's off.

I hang up before he can catch on any more to what I'm feeling.

I glance back down to the test in my hand and curse out loud again as the reality of the situation crashes down again.

"Fuck."

It's not that I'm not excited about the idea of having a kid, it's just that I don't want a kid _now._ I'm going to hell in less than three weeks and I won't even be two months pregnant by then.

Besides, even if I did make it out of this deal alive, is this really the life to raise a kid in? I know how Sam and Dean were raised, and they had some seriously fucked-up childhoods. No child deserves to be told that all their nightmares are real.

I unlock the bathroom door and step out so I can pace across the carpet floor of the motel room, stopping every few turns to pull aside the curtain and peek out for the Impala. It doesn't come for another twenty minutes and by that point I'm starting to get a little irked.

Sam and Dean walk towards the motel, a bag of food and some drinks in their hands, and I open my door and step out to greet them.

"Uh, Sam," I say urgently. "I need to talk to you for a minute."

Both brothers cast me a questioning glance, but Sam hands his bag of food to Dean and says in an almost parent-like voice, "Don't eat my food," as he follows me into my room.

I shut the door behind the two of us.

"What's wrong?" he asks, eyebrows knitting together in worry at my nervous manner.

"Um," I say, swallowing nervously. "I'm p-" I can barely say it. I swallow again and take a deep breath. "I'm pregnant," I rush out, before I can change my mind halfway through.

Sam stands there, unmoving. "You… what?" he says uneasily.

"I'm… pregnant," I say again, this time a little more steadily.

Sam runs a hand through his hair. "Who— when— how?"

"It's yours. I think from that time, three weeks ago. After, uh, I saved you from that vetala. I guess the contraception didn't work as well as we'd hoped, huh?" I say uncomfortably.

"What are we going to do?" Sam asks nervously, dropping onto the edge of the bed in shock. "An abortion?" he suggests. He, like I, doesn't like the idea of having kids, at least in this life. Maybe one day, in a world that doesn't need quite so much saving from the Winchesters, he might settle down and have a family, but not while he's busy fighting monsters.

"No," I say quickly. "Not an abortion." Mostly, it's because I want to keep the baby, but I don't tell him that. Despite everything, I can't help but want a child. "What if we make the best of a bad situation?" I say instead, regaining my composure. "I signed away my soul. But I never signed away the soul of the baby."

Sam looks at me quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, maybe I can get an extra eight or nine months. At least until this," I say, motioning towards my stomach, "Is over." I hate to talk about the baby like it's just a way to keep living for a little longer and nothing more, but at the time being, it _is_ one of the only options available to us.

Sam runs a hand through his hair again. "But after? You'd leave me to raise a kid? I couldn't… You know how I was raised, I could never…" He seems lost for words.

"Shh, it's okay," I say, sitting down on the bed next to him, taking his hand in mine. "You'd be a better father than your dad ever was, I know it. And if you want, there's always Bobby. If nothing else, he could find someone to take care of the baby."

Sam takes a deep breath. "Okay."

"Sound like a plan?" I say. "Talk to a demon and try to get more time?"

"Yeah," Sam says, still shaken.

"Now I guess we have to tell Dean," I say, glancing at the wall that adjoins his and Sam's room with mine.

"Yeah," Sam says. "Now we have to tell Dean."


	5. Chapter 5

Sam explains the situation to Dean, who eats his burger voraciously despite the unnerving news Sam is sharing, and I pick at the sandwich they brought me. I can't even think about eating right now.

"So… Let me get this straight. Eva… is pregnant. And you want to use the unborn baby as a way to get out of the deal?"

"Not out of the deal. Just to extend it by eight or nine months. We can use the time to figure a way out of the deal."

I roll my eyes. There is no way out. Everyone knows it, despite the fact that they keep pretending otherwise.

"So are we going to go talk to the crossroads demon tonight or not?" Sam says.

"Come on, man, it's almost one in the morning, and we've been driving all day!" Dean groans.

"I don't want to wait an entire day," Sam complains.

"I'd rather get this out of the way now," I agree.

"Come on!" Dean whines again.

"This is important, Dean," I say, unimpressed.

He lets out an exasperated sigh, knowing already he's not getting his way. "Fine. We can go now."

* * *

Roughly thirty minutes later, the three of us are standing at the crossroads, Sam and Dean leaning against the Impala as I bury the box and then walk back over to them. Again, there's no devil's trap. The goal here isn't to catch a demon, just to talk to one.

Sam and Dean look more confident, more in their element. I'd rarely gone up against demons in the past years. I hunted smaller things, like ghosts and werewolves and vampires, things that normal hunters go after. It wasn't until I joined up with the Winchesters that demons started popping up more often. And even then, the brothers had been dealing with them for years up to that point. They're like goddamn magnets for the things.

"Hello, boys," a voice finally says, and the three of us glance up to see none other than the King of the Crossroads himself. Or rather, the King of Hell, at this point, now that Lucifer's locked up tight in the cage. "And girl," Crowley adds in surprise. "I didn't think she'd still be sticking around with you two by this point." He nods at me. "You deserve better than these two numbskulls," he says courteously.

I don't respond, just scowl at him.

He pauses for a moment as he contemplates me, then smiles. "Congratulations, by the way."

I know what he means but I ask anyway. "Congratulations for what?"

"The baby!" Crowley says enthusiastically, motioning vaguely at me. "Who's the father?"

Sam clears his throat and raises a hand up. "That would be me."

"Moose! You're going to be a dad. You must be so excited." He sounds almost sincere, as if we've run across each other at a party rather than meeting in the middle of the night at a crossroads.

"Enough with the pleasantries," I snap. "We came here to talk."

"Only talk?" Crowley asks suspiciously.

"Only talk," I assure him. Dean and Sam are letting me take this one. It's my fight, not theirs, as much as they want to help. "It's about the deal I made."

"Ah, yes, I heard about that," Crowley says. He glances at Sam. "Glad to see you up and about, by the way." He looks back at me and purses his lips. "How long do you have again?"

"T-two weeks left," I stutter. I hadn't meant to say it so unsurely, but saying it out loud makes me realize just how short a period of time I have left. "And, as you pointed out, I'm pregnant."

Crowley furrows his eyebrows and nods thoughtfully.

"The deal was for one soul, not two," I add, though I'm sure he's already figured that out himself.

"Well, we are in a bit of a situation, aren't we?" he says, narrowing his eyes like he's trying to work something out. "Ah!" he finally says, eyes back on the three of us again. "Two birds with one stone."

"Wha—" I start, but then Crowley snaps his fingers and there's a stabbing pain in my abdomen, like period cramps but fifty times worse. I cry out as I fold over from the pain, and Sam and Dean are immediately there to hold me up.

"You okay?" Sam asks softly enough for just me to hear, concern on his face.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," I lie. I push Sam and Dean away and straighten up to face Crowley. "What the fuck was that?" I say in a strained voice, almost a whimper. I'm clutching onto my lower stomach, still having trouble breathing from the pain.

"Simple," Crowley says with a quick smile. "You"—he points to me—"are no longer expecting. And now, there's a nice couple who have been trying unsuccessfully to conceive and who are going to be receiving a pleasant surprise."

"You… you gave my baby to someone else?" I say in a broken voice.

Sam is silent beside me. I don't even know if I want to see the look on his face. Whatever it is, I'm sure it's nothing good. Dean, on the other hand, is angry. "_Not_ cool, Crowley!" he growls furiously.

Crowley raises his eyebrows unsympathetically. "Would you rather have had the baby die along with its mother?"

Dean steps back but fumes silently.

"Glad I could help you lot out," Crowley says, and with a wink, he's gone.

"That son of a bitch!" Dean yells after a moment, to no one and nowhere in particular.

"It's okay, Dean," I say quietly, even though its not. I can't help but be filled with grief like I've had some great loss, even though I'd only found out about the baby a couple of hours ago. "I didn't want the baby anyway," I lie.

Dean grumbles something as he opens the driver's side door and slides in behind the wheel.

"You sure you're okay?" Sam asks, taking my hand in his and giving it a light squeeze. I gaze up into his eyes. He's sad, but not as crushed as I must seem.

"Fine," I say again, but as I say it, a tear slides down my cheek. Sam gently wipes it away with his thumb and pulls me into a tight hug.

"You will be," he says as he releases me.

I laugh, throat thick with tears, and sniff sadly. "Yeah. About the time I'll be headed to hell."

"Forgot about that," Sam says with a lopsided grin.

It fades as we stand there, replaced with look of solemnity on both our faces. There's a sense of understanding passing between us, like we know what we've lost and we know what the other feels like.

"Get in the damn car!" Dean shouts through the rolled-down window, snapping whatever connection Sam and I had been having right then.

I sigh. "Coming, Dean."


	6. Chapter 6

I wake up breathing heavily and covered in a cold sweat, my heart pounding loud and fast. I was pulled out of my sleep by a nightmare, of jet-black eyes and sharp claws and pointy teeth, monsters and demons and worse.

I know I'm not getting back to sleep. Not in the emptiness of this dark room, anyway.

I wish I could. I'm exhausted after only getting a couple hours last night. Dean had stopped by at a liquor store on the way back and we shared a bottle of whiskey, taking shots until it was empty, the only sleep we got from dozing off in our chairs.

We'd had to go out in the morning, to try to figure out the case of who's been snatching local teenagers. Working with a hangover, on little sleep and after an emotionally taxing visit from a demon, was difficult, to say the least, so I really, _really_ need some more rest.

I tiredly pick up my phone from my nightstand and turn it on, squinting my eyes at the sudden bright light. I scroll through my contacts until I find the one I want, and then I hit _Call._

Sam picks up after three rings. "Hello?" he says groggily. I must've woken him up.

"Sam?" I say softly.

"Eva?"

"Yeah."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, not really," I say, even though there is. I'm scared. But I'd never admit that. "I just… was having trouble sleeping, that's all. Did I wake you up? Or Dean?"

"Just me," Sam says. I can hear him yawn.

"Sorry," I grumble.

"No, it's no problem. So what's up? Did you just call because you couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah," I say, biting my lip, debating whether I should say what I'm really thinking or not. I decide to go for it. "And… it's just that I don't want to be alone. When, you know. I will be so soon anyway."

"Oh," comes the voice from the other end of the line.

I'm starting to wonder if he hung up and went back to sleep when he adds, "I'll be right over."

There's a beep as he hangs up and ten seconds later there's a knock on the door.

I open the door for him and he steps in, still wearing his jeans and at least two layers of shirts, hair only slightly mussed from sleep. I, on the other hand, am looking very sloppy in a t-shirt and sweats, short hair sticking up wildly in every direction. I'm too tired to bring myself to care.

"Hey," I say, the corner of my mouth quirking up. The images of monsters flashing in the back of my mind since waking up finally stop, now that he's here.

"Hey," he replies.

I go and crawl back into bed, leaving him to close the door and then come over. He settles himself down on the bed so that he's on top of the covers, and I'm underneath.

He wraps an arm around me and I snuggle up next to him, relaxing in the warmth radiating off him. It's so relieving to not be alone. I'm sleepy again, now that the adrenalin from the dream has had time to fade and Sam's calming presence is nearby.

"Why couldn't you sleep?" Sam asks softly, his lips pressed lightly against my hair.

"Nightmare," I mutter. "I feel better now."

"Oh," Sam says understandingly. "It's okay. I've got you."

"No," I just say, too tired to explain that no, I don't need anyone else to protect me, I'm perfectly capable of it myself.

He seems to get it though, doesn't push for an explanation. He knows how I am with these things.

"Thanks for coming over, Sam," I murmur, my words slightly slurred by sleepiness.

"No problem," he says softly, voice still clear, unlike mine. I don't know how he can stay so alert on so little sleep.

I want to stay awake, to ask Sam what we're going to do now, or… to ask if he wanted kids and a family, or a normal life, or if he wanted kids with _me_… I want to talk to him about us and if we might be something more and if he'd have wanted the baby if I'd been able to keep it because it was his but also mine and if when he thought about having a normal, apple-pie life, it was me there beside him in that cookie-cutter house watching our children play on a neatly-trimmed lawn.

But I don't ask him any of that. The thoughts start to slip from my mind as I start dozing off.

I'm able to get out one sentence before I'm completely gone. "I love you, Sam," I hum quietly.

"I love you too, Eva," he murmurs back.

* * *

With our last chance of delaying the deal gone, we try to forget about it for the final two weeks. There are some differences, though. I treat myself to milkshakes and burgers instead of sticking with the usual salad that I would get to match Sam's. I get to ride in the front of the Impala when I want to. I get first pick for what job I want to take when we're out working on the case (as far as we can tell, a werewolf). I always choose the one that requires the least amount of effort.

It's almost possible to forget that I'm going to hell during the day. A sort of lingering sense of malaise stays with me, always, but it doesn't distract too much.

It's night that's the really gets me. After bothering Sam once in the middle of the night, I try to get by without him. I'll have to in hell, won't I? I'll have no one to look after me then. So when I wake up from the inevitable nightmares with a startled gasp, I just sit in the dark, trying to count to a million to calm myself down enough to sleep again.

It doesn't help a lot. My mind still wanders. _You'll be dead in a matter of days._ Ten days. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five.

At four days left, we kill the werewolf in the town.

At three days, we tie up loose ends: make sure the werewolf was the only one around, all the missing people have their bodies accounted for, etcetera.

I have two days left when I start seeing things. I can't tell if its the proximity to my death-date or just the fact that I'm so sleep-deprived. I sometimes have to ask Sam and Dean to repeat things because one or both of them shift into monstrous beings when I look at them and I can't hear a word they're saying. When I try to do read any large amount of text, the words rearrange and shift, repeating words like _hell_ or _you're dead._

Tonight's my last full night before I'm gone.

Dean's out picking up as much salt as he can for when we—_I_, I correct myself—get a visit from the hellhounds.

It's just me and Sam in the motel room, loading rock salt rounds alone.

"Ugh," I groan after finishing the ones in front of me. I stand up to stretch and then go plop down on the edge of the bed. I close my eyes and hold my head in my hands. I'm so tired. I just wish I could sleep.

"I'm gonna die," I say after a few moments of silence.

"You're not," Sam says quietly.

"I am."

No response. I can hear him get up and come sit down next to me, though.

"Eva," he says, moving one of my arms down so he can see my face and tilting my chin up towards him as I open my eyes. I'd scowl but I just don't have the energy.

"I…" he starts. It sounds like the beginning of something emotional for him. But he stops, a conflicted look on his face. He cups my face in his hand. "I…" he starts again. But his face is too close to mine and somehow the few inches between us disappears, my lips meeting his in a tentative kiss. Sam's hands run down my back, pulling me closer to him, and suddenly we're kissing each other hungrily, unable to get enough of each other during these final hours before I'm headed towards eternal damnation.

"Wait," I gasp out, pushing Sam away. "I can't."

"What?" Sam asks, brows furrowed in concern.

"I can't, not now. I'm…" I give a forced laugh and gesture at myself. "Sleep-deprived, hallucinating, and basically just a mess. I can't do this now." I bite my lip and watch Sam's face. He takes a deep breath and nods.

"Okay," he says softly, his bright, sad eyes still focused on my tired ones.

There's the sound of the doorknob turning, and the door opens for Dean to come in, holding several bags of rock salt.

"Hey," he says, glancing between the two of us. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"No," both of us say at the same time.

"Okay," Dean says suspiciously. "Well, I got a shit-ton of salt, so we should be pretty well stocked up for the next…" He glances up at the ceiling as he makes an estimation. "The next year or two."

I smile weakly. "You guys'll be nice and stocked up when I'm not around to run errands for us anymore."

"I didn't get all this salt just for you to die," Dean says bluntly, raising his eyebrows at me as if daring me to challenge him. I shrug. "Anyway, Bobby called. Said we need to head about five hundred miles west."

"What? Why?" I ask.

"Six people dead, hearts torn out of their chests."

"So? Sounds like another werewolf. Can't somebody else take care of it?"

"I wasn't done," Dean says, shushing me. "On top of that there's been electrical storms, temperature fluctuations… Bobby thinks it's pointing to—"

"A demon," Sam finishes with a frown. "A powerful one."

"And we have to take care of this _now_, because…?" I ask.

"Last time we saw things like this…" Sam shakes his head. "We were searching for the demon that killed our mom."

"Oh," I say. "You don't think he's back, do you?"

"No, he can't be. I shot him myself," Dean says, a malicious but sure undertone to his voice. "We need to check it out anyway, because whatever it is, it's powerful."

"And it probably has something to do with you guys in some way or another, right?" I ask, rolling my eyes.

"Something like that."

"How far did you say it was?" Sam asks. "Five hundred miles?"

"About ten hours."

"Eva?" Sam glances towards me. "You okay with this? We could wait for a couple days."

I laugh darkly. "What, until I'm dead? No, I don't think so. I'm coming with you."

"All right," Dean says with a shrug. "Better leave tonight, then."

I stand up and shrug on my jacket. "Great. Let's get headed out, then."

I glance at the clock on the nightstand. Midnight.

Twenty-four hours left.


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's Note: I am actual trash. I am so sorry it took three weeks for me to upload this, and I don't know how long it will take until the next chapter. :/ Thanks for being so patient!_

* * *

By the time we get to the town in the southern US, the death toll's risen to seven. All the same: chest torn open, heart missing.

Death number eight is called into the police line just as we're getting settled into our motel room.

Dean and Sam try to get me to stay back at the motel room and rest, but despite how tired I am, I refuse. I'm not going to let them go and investigate without me.

The body is of a nineteen-year-old boy, found by his roommate in their apartment, and its a gory sight. Chest ripped open, ribs cracked apart, heart gone. One of the police officers gags and rushes to the bathroom when he sees it and I hear the sounds of him emptying his stomach soon after. Sam, Dean, and I have seen worse. Hell, we've _done_ worse. I mean, decapitating a vampire doesn't leave very pretty results.

Sam and Dean are kneeling next to the body, wearing latex gloves to examine it for any evidence of the supernatural, as I stand staring glumly out the window. There's a few passerby, but all of them have at least one or two other people with them. I guess the thought of a serial killer on the loose is keeping people cautious.

A wave of fatigue washes over me. I wish I could've just slept one last night peacefully, uninterrupted by nightmares. Couldn't I just have been given that?

I turn around and walk over to Sam and Dean. "Agent Stark, Agent Banner," I say, interrupting them from their work. They glance up. "I'm gonna head out."

"How come?" Sam says.

"I need some coffee or I'm not gonna be able to make it another five minutes."

Sam straightens up. "Want me to come with you?"

"No, I'll be good. I'm just going across the street," I say, nodding in the direction of the coffee shop below.

"All right. If you're sure."

I roll my eyes. "Yes, Sam. I'm sure. Just text me, 'kay? Let me know where to meet you."

Sam looks like he wants to argue, but Dean interjects, "Sounds good."

I nod. "See you in a few."

I step into the hall and trot down the stairs and out into the street. I pause just before I'm about to cross the street because something catches my eye: there's a woman, by herself. Weird, considering how everyone is walking in pairs. I watch her walk down the street casually, not as worried-looking as the other people around her.

When she reaches a space between two buildings, she glances around furtively before ducking into the alley, and in the half-second that she's facing me, I take a sharp intake of breath. I know without a doubt she's a demon, her true form revealed underneath her vessel, and she's terrifying.

I should call Sam and Dean and wait for them, but I'll lose her if I don't act quickly enough. So I send them a quick text - _There's a demon. I'm going after her. Use GPS on my phone to find me. _

I cross the street. Go down the alley. It's a dead end, just garbage bins back here, with no one in sight. I walk tentatively down towards the end, taking my knife from my inside pocket and unsheathing it. I hold it tightly, warily…

Suddenly there's a hand covering my nose and mouth and a knife held to my throat, and I let out a muffled shout. I hadn't even heard anyone approach, even with the keen senses of a hunter.

"Glad you could make it," a voice purrs in my ear, unmistakably British, as I struggle for air. I claw at the hand preventing me from breathing and try stomping on the foot of the person behind me, but nothing I do seems to even bother her.

My lungs are burning, running out of oxygen too quickly. My struggling slows as the edges of my vision start to darken and then everything goes black.

* * *

When I wake up, I'm sitting in a chair, ankles tied to its legs and arms tied behind its back.

"Fuck," I say out loud, looking around. I'm somewhere dark and dank and probably underground. A basement, maybe. It's mostly empty, except for a few crates in the corner. My phone, cracked and broken, is sitting on one of them. I have no clue how Sam and Dean are going to find me now.

And, of course, the woman standing in front of me with a dark smile on her face. She looks normal, mostly. Trench coat over a skirt suit. Black high heels. Brown hair tied up in a high ponytail. The big difference is the face under that of her meatsuit's, flickering in and out of visibility. A demon's face, I know without a doubt. Yeah, I fucked up big time.

"Good morning, sunshine," she says. I glare at her in response. "Hey, no need to be so grumpy."

"What time is it?" is the first question out of my mouth. I can't stop it. I only have hours left, and who knows how long I spent unconscious.

"Around noon, I think," she says. She smiles sadistically, and I know she knows about my deal. Twelve hours. It could be worse. I was only out for maybe half an hour.

"Why am I here?" I growl as threateningly as I can. It's tough to do when I'm hours away from death and tied up in somebody's basement. Doesn't stop me from trying, though.

The woman tsks. "You work with the Winchesters. I saw you and them, pulling into town in that unmistakable ugly car of theirs."

"And? You didn't answer my question," I say forcefully.

She rolls her eyes. "Information. I assume you're more to them than just a whore?"

I scowl. "Shut the fuck up. You don't know anything."

She grins and continues, "I do know they're looking into my actions here. Which isn't going to work."

"Why? What are you doing?" I ask.

She laughs. "As if I'd tell you." There's a moment of silence as she watches me contemplatively. "But I need to ask you about some things."

"As if I'd tell you," I say hostilely, repeating her words.

"Cheeky, aren't you? I don't think you have a choice," she says, voice eerily calm. She picks up a blade—my blade, I notice with a flash of anger—from the top of a pile of boxes, and saunters towards me.

"Would you like to talk now, while you have the chance?"

"Never," I spit.

"You have nothing to gain, you know. I know about your deal. What's the point of squandering your last few hours in pain just to protect two boys who barely care about you?"

"You. Don't. Know. Anything." I spit the words from behind clenched teeth.

"I'm sure."

"They're going to find me and kill you. No." I pause, a new idea coming to my mind. "They're going to let me go, and then _I'm_ going to kill you."

The woman is standing close now, too close. She flips the knife in her hand so the blade is out and makes a quick slash down my face. I scream as my cheek is torn open, warm blood already running down. I've had worse, but it still stings like hell.

"How much do you and your boys know about my plans?" she asks, coldly as I try to calm my erratic breathing.

I swallow. "Everything. We know everything."

"Oh, really. I suppose you know what the entire endeavor is here with collecting hearts, then."

"Of course," I say calmly.

She watches me with a slight smile, crossing her arms. "I'm waiting," she says after a moment.

"The spell," I say, hoping I'm somewhere in the right area.

Her smile widens. "You have no idea. Good. Next order of business. The Winchesters. Tell me, did they get back the Colt? Do they have any other weapons like it?"

I grit my teeth and stay silent.

"Come on," she says, dragging the knife slowly but forcefully across my collarbone. I clench my teeth, trying not to scream. "You can tell me."

I say nothing.

"This doesn't have to be as difficult as you're making it," the demon says with a sigh.

But of course it does. She spends ten minutes, fifteen, twenty asking questions that get only snide comments in response. I'm pretty sure she's at the point where she's planning to kill me, the cool anger permeating off her in waves, when there's a bang upstairs and the woman swears. Evidently something's gone wrong. I can only hope it's who I think it is.

"Sam! Dean! D—" The demon backhands me before I can finish, shutting me up and eliciting a gasp of pain, but they've already heard. There's the quick clunking of feet on the stairs as someone runs down. Sam and Dean rush into the room, guns held up. Their aims immediately fly to the woman's head, but in the same second, there's the cold metal of my knife pressed to my throat.

"Hello, boys," she says from behind me. "Haven't seen you in a while." At the confused looks on their faces, she lets out a sound of exasperation. "You don't remember? All the fun times we had as the two of us"—she nods at Dean—"lived out the last year of our deals?"

There's a moment of silence. "Bela?" Dean says incredulously.

"You _know_ her?" I exclaim, but gasp as the knife is held closer. It nicks my skin and I feel a drop of blood swell up.

"I wasn't expecting you to drop in quite so quickly," the woman—Bela—says.

"Yeah, well," Dean says, swapping his gun for the demon knife. I feel Bela tense up behind me as she notices it. "You know us. Can't stay away from trouble."

"Put down the knife and we might be able to work something out that doesn't result in the death of your friend," she says.

I shake my head subtly. _Don't put it down, Dean. Kill her, even if I die too._

He flips it over in his hand but doesn't set it down, though he and Sam are both wary.

"I'll give you five seconds," Bela says coldly.

"You wouldn't," Dean says.

"Four."

"Think about this first, Bela."

"Three."

I swallow nervously. Dean clenches his jaw.

"Two."

_Kill her, _I mouth at Dean.

Bela never reaches one. Dean sends the knife spinning through the air towards her head but in the same instant, the knife at my throat presses down and slices and there's a flash of pain and suddenly I'm drowning in my own blood and completely unable to take a breath that I need so badly and the presence behind me is gone—_she got away_—and everything is going so slow and so fast and _I'm going to hell I'm going to hell I'm going to hell _and Sam is yelling something and Dean is already rushing towards me but the world is already fading away and


	8. Chapter 8

The first time I'd run across Sam and Dean was in a town in Wisconsin.

It was the fourth or fifth month on my own, apart from any hunters, but I'd had several years of training, so I knew what I was doing. I had been racking up kills of the supernatural, keeping track of them in a leather-bound journal with everything I was learning along the way. A lot of hunters I'd known had done the same, which is how I'd picked up the habit.

This time, I'd spent a week and a half following leads, investigating as a "journalist," and picking apart the case. I'd determined it was a shapeshifter and had tracked it to an abandoned water tower on the edge of the town. It had escaped and I'd pursued it, but by the time I'd caught up, it had already been killed.

Recently, actually. It was dark, but I could see the two men standing over the body, one unusually tall and the other a bit shorter with bowed legs. When they heard me, they'd looked over, quickly hiding their silver knives behind their backs.

Hunters.

_Male_ hunters, no less.

I'd stopped in frustration and tried to suppress the boiling rage I was feeling. I'd spent _a week and a half _trailing this sorry son of a bitch, and they'd just gone and wasted that precious time.

"Um, hey, our buddy's just really drunk, we're trying to help get him home!" the shorter one calls to me, trying to make up a story to avoid suspicion.

I ground my teeth. "You took my kill!" I turned and sprinted off, because while I'd love to beat the living crap out of an arrogant hunter with his head up his ass, I didn't like the odds of two to one.

"Hey, wait!" one of them called after me, but I'd ignored them and kept going, not stopping until I was back at my car and safe.

The next time I met the two of them was only a week later in southern Illinois. Turned out we'd followed the same case there.

I'd met them as I was interviewing a woman who claimed her long-dead husband had visited her a few nights before. I'd been pretending to be a journalist again; it was much easier to pull off than a government official, and people weren't as likely to question me about it. It meant less access, but less going wrong if someone was suspicious. But those two had barged right into my conversation, dressed in their fancy suits and flashing fake FBI badges, pushing me aside to talk to the woman.

I recognized them. It had been dark and they'd been fairly far away, but they were a pretty distinctive pair. Of course I'd waited until they finished their investigation and then confronted them about it outside the woman's house, in front of their black car that was reminiscent of my own in its nearly-extinct and decades-old style.

I'd almost panicked when they told me who they were. I was ready to get in my car and drive to the opposite end of the country as quickly as I could.

Sam and Dean Winchester.

The men who started and ended the Apocalypse. Befriended an angel _and_ a demon. Both had gone to heaven and hell and back. They were among the best hunters the world had ever seen, able to kill every supernatural being they'd run across: vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, fairies, dragons, demons, angels. Everything.

And Sam Winchester. I'd been explicitly told by every hunter I'd worked with to stay away from him. Anyone who'd seen him hunt in the past year knew he was ruthless, killing without hesitation and accepting any casualties along the way so long as the goal was accomplished.

Still, now that I was here in front of him he seemed nice enough. Sweet, even.

But I'd learned the hard way that first impressions can be misleading.

I'm not sure why I stayed, but I did. They agreed to work with me as long as I wasn't a burden. They didn't work with amateurs, as Dean pointed out. I rolled my eyes at that. Me, an amateur? Yeah, right.

I hated working with other hunters, especially men. But these guys had several decades on me in hunting experience and they'd take this hunt from me too if I didn't work with them.

Despite my sulkiness and lack of trust, we managed to solve the case pretty well together. We didn't say a lot outside of what we had to. I learned Dean liked pie, Sam liked books, and both of them would complain every time Justin Bieber came on the radio. Dean tried flirting with me a few times but got the impression quickly enough that if he continued, his head would end up separated from his body. But really, they weren't nearly as bad or terrifying as the legends made them out to be.

After the case we'd split up again, but somehow we ended up running into each other a few weeks later on _another_ case, since we'd been mostly going around the same area since Wisconsin.

It was sort of nice having company, actually. When they made inside jokes, I understood quite a few of them, sometimes even smiled in spite of myself. They dispelled some of the rumors I'd heard about them ("I have not slept with the Tooth Fairy, I have no idea where that even came from") and confirmed some of the others ("Yeah, Sam, he… had no soul for a while, and, well… he wasn't quite himself").

I tried to remain distant and unattached to them, but the camaraderie between the two of them was strong enough to pull me in and make me feel included, even if there was a lot that I could never understand about them the way they understood each other.

Once I'd overheard them whispering about me.

"Maybe we should split up," Sam had said unsurely. "I don't know if we can really trust her."

"Are you kidding? She's one of the best hunters we've ever worked with," Dean had replied.

I'd smiled to myself. I knew I was good, but it was sort of nice to have the feeling affirmed by two of the best hunters in existence.

After that case, we'd agreed to keep working together.

It was a couple weeks later when Sam had been in my motel room as Dean was out doing reconnaissance and one thing had lead to another and whoops, we slept together. Accidents do happen. Though admittedly, that accident was not a bad one. It said a lot that I had allowed myself to sleep with Sam, given it was the first time in more than a year, ever since _that night_. I cared about Dean a lot, for sure, but Sam was the one who was my best friend.

Over the next year of me working with them, I'd changed without even noticing. I was friendlier and kinder and much closer to a semblance of my old self, back before I'd had my naivety crushed. I talked about my insecurities with Sam and Dean, which was something I never would have dreamed of doing before. Telling someone all my weaknesses, someone who could very well use them against me, was something I'd grown incredibly wary of.

I'd finally healed from my angry, bitter shell of a person, unwilling to face fears and admit failings, to someone who knew that tears didn't mean I was weak and leaning on someone wasn't the stupidest idea in the world.

I'd finally found a home.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: I stole part of this chapter and adapted it from a one shot I wrote a long time ago. Anyway. Sorry in advance, Sam lovers._

* * *

I take a deep breath. I'm standing in front of the motel room door that Sam and Dean are staying in for the case they're working on, trying to muster up the courage to knock. They haven't seen me in months. I haven't seen them in decades. Time passes a lot slower in hell.

Hesitantly, I knock on the door. I can just imagine the boys inside, exchanging looks and wondering who's visiting them at this time of night. It takes a few moments before the lock on the door clicks open and the door opens a bit.

It's Dean. I'm glad it's him and not the other brother because I'm not sure if I can handle seeing him yet.

He just stands there, his eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing as he tries to come up with something to say, and then he closes the door in my face.

I'm standing there in shock, wondering what to do next, when the door reopens and I'm splashed with water. I splutter and make an annoyed noise but at least now I understand I'm not being turned away. Holy water. He's making sure I'm actually me. He grabs my hand and, pulling out a silver knife, gives me a quick cut on the side of my wrist.

I wince but don't pull my hand away.

"Eva?" he finally says quietly, his voice cracking. He looks at the floor. "I'm sorry. I didn't think… I didn't think it could actually be you. I had to make sure you weren't a shifter or something worse."

"Dean?" a voice calls from somewhere behind him in the room, and I can't help but flinch a little bit. Sam. Dean's ignores him as he pulls me into a hug. I just stand there limply, not hugging back. It's nice, having the presence of another human so close after so much time, but… Hugging's not my thing. Not anymore, anyway.

"Dean, who is it?" Sam says again, and I can hear his footsteps approaching.

"Look who's back from the dead," Dean says, a smile in his voice. He lets go of me and steps back so Sam can see me.

I pale as soon as I see him, and he just stands there in complete shock. I'm starting to think he's turned into a statue when finally he takes a quick step towards me, like he's going to give me a hug like Dean did. I know I should tolerate it like I did Dean's, but I impulsively spin my blade from my pocket into my hand and hold it in front of me defensively.

Sam's open arms drop. He bites his lip and turns away, trying to hide the hurt expression on his face. I slowly lower my knife, embarrassed of my automatic reaction.

"Eva," Dean says cautiously. "What happened down there?"

I clench my jaw. "I think you know," I say in a voice I'm trying my hardest to keep from shaking.

Sam still isn't looking looking at me when he says, "Did I… I mean, did the demons…"

"Yeah. Thirty-five years in hell, tortured by demons with your face."

Sam curses and turns away from me.

I know Sam—_this_ Sam—isn't a demon. But it's instinctive now.

In hell, at first, I had known it wasn't him. It was just a demon trying to get to me, trying to make me as miserable as possible physically and emotionally. I reminded myself over and over and over, _This isn't Sam. This isn't Sam. This isn't Sam._ But after a while, I'd came to associate that face with the worst pain I had ever known, and it became hard to connect his image with any good memories.

I look up at Dean and address him. "We need to talk about—" I glance at Sam out of the corner of my eye and shift nervously. "He…" I start to say, focusing on Dean's face again. "I can't… Can't…" I search for the right word. Finally I just shake my head. "I just can't."

Sam doesn't need any further explanation. He grabs his jacket from a hook by the door and the keys from the table and marches out. I watch him until he's in the Impala and pulling away before stepping into the room and pushing the door shut behind me.

"You okay?" Dean asks.

I let out a huff and storm over to drop onto the bed. I lay there looking at the ceiling, filled with an overwhelming desire to just close my eyes and sleep.

But I answer Dean's question anyway. "Hell is not a nice place, Dean."

"I know," he says, his voice softening with sympathy. He knows all too well what it's like, living in hell.

There's a moment of silence before he asks, "Why did you come back to us, if you knew how it would feel to be around Sam?"

"The demon who broke me out told me to."

"The demon who broke you out? How did they— Who was it? Why did they help you?"

I sigh in exasperation. "Long story. I'm exhausted. I'll tell you in the morning."

"But—"

"In the morning."

He doesn't respond.

"And I'm taking this bed," I say forcefully, as if daring him to challenge me. I scoot up and then under the covers and curl up, not even bothering to change out of my dirt-crusted jeans and boots.

"That's… mine. Nevermind," he sighs.

The lights stay on but I don't care. It's nice to finally get some sleep after so long without it.


	10. Chapter 10

The next morning, I'm all rested up and eating a chocolate muffin (god, how I missed these things) when Sam stumbles in, smelling strongly of alcohol and a late evening.

Dean and I don't say anything, just watch silently as he sits down on the edge of the bed and places his head in his hands. I can tell Dean's noticed how much I've tensed up because of Sam's presence, because his eyes are fixated on me.

Dean clears his throat uncomfortably. "Eva was just telling me how she got out of hell."

"Yeah?" Sam asks, not even hiding his complete lack of interest. He's definitely hung over. His head is probably killing him right now.

"Turns out she was busted out by one of our old friends," Dean continues.

"Mmhmm."

"You remember Meg?"

Sam looks up at Dean, groggy but attentive now. "Meg?"

I sigh and say, "Yeah, she helped me out. It's complicated."

"We've got time." Sam is watching me warily, as if I'm going to come at him with a knife again. It's not a sure thing that I won't, actually. No, Sam is an ally, I remind myself tiredly in an attempt to get the thought out of my head.

I let out a huff of exasperation. "Well, she found me a few days ago. In earth time, I mean. The short version is she freed me and snuck me out through Purgatory and then through a portal back into earth. Humans-only portal," I clarify. "No monsters can get out.

"But she told me that I had to find you guys right away. There's something big going down - with Bela. Remember those hearts she was collecting? She used them in a spell to open Lucifer's cage. But not enough for the angels to escape. Meg didn't clarify on why Bela opened it, but…" I shrug. "Now something's out of the cage and Bela is trying to get something for a new client."

Sam lets out a noise of disbelief. "She's still doing that? Even after dying and coming back as a demon? I thought she would've at least gone on to bigger and better things."

"Apparently. But this is an important thing. Meg didn't know what it was, but this client is pretty big, I guess. So Bela's willing to go pretty far to get it. Meg told me she hasn't done much yet, but she has big plans."

Sam ponders what I've said for a few moments. "But what got out of the cage?"

"I was wondering the same thing," Dean said.

"There wasn't much in it. As far as we know, it was just Lucifer and Michael and their vessels. And I'm here, so that means…"

"Crap," Dean says, running a hand down his face tiredly. "Adam."

"Crap," Sam says, a similar expression of disbelief on his face.

"Who?" I demand.

"Our brother," Dean says.

"You have a brother?" I ask incredulously. "And you haven't mentioned this now because…?"

There's an awkward silence.

"Well," Dean says with a casual shrug, with as much dismissiveness as he can muster. "We got a little sidetracked. It happens."

I let out a noise of disgust. "You forgot about your fucking brother?"

"Half-brother," Sam corrects.

"You went to the trouble to get Sam out of hell but not your other brother," I say disbelievingly.

"Technically, it was Cas that got Sam out of hell," Dean says defensively. "And Death gave me the option between getting Sam's soul back, or Adam's, and it's not a surprise who I chose."

"And then you just forgot about him?" I ask, eyebrows raised. "You two are fucking unbelievable. You left your brother locked up with the two angriest and most powerful angels in creation for… how long? Two years? Three? And now a demon has just released him, for who knows what reason."

"Come on, it's not like we could have seen that coming," Sam says.

"You left him locked up for years!" I snap, causing Sam to wince. I'd almost forgotten about his hangover. "Is that what you did with me? Just left me to rot? I guess that's what you do with everyone besides each other, right? You say family has to look out for each other but you couldn't even bother to look into the imprisonment of your own brother!"

"We would never leave you in hell without looking for a way out of it, Eva," Sam says, voice shaking a little bit. "We were searching for a way to get you back from the second you died."

I turn away, jaw clenched. "Well, you sure did a good job helping me out," I grumble sarcastically.

"Eva," Sam pleads.

I stand up and toss my empty muffin wrapper on the table. "I'm going out," I tell them, not even looking at them.

"Eva," Sam says again, standing up and putting a hand lightly on my arm.

I jerk away instinctively, spinning around and staring at him with wide eyes as my heart races far past its normal speed. I hold up a hand to keep him distanced from me as I back up, trying not to tremble in nervousness. "Don't."

"I'm sorry, I forgot—"

Scowling at him, I turn and stride towards the motel room's door, careful to make sure he's not following me. I turn and give them one last contemptuous look before slipping out the door and slamming it shut behind me.

* * *

You don't matter to them. They left you in hell. The persistent voice in the back of my mind pesters me as I sit on top of the roof of a nearby diner with my legs hanging over the edge, tossing pebbles at the ground. It's six in the morning so hardly anybody is out to start with, but it's also all alone a quarter mile from any other building out on this lonely road.

I hear a slight sound of gravel crunching and whip around.

It's Dean, standing about ten feet away. He holds his hands up in surrender when he sees the furious look I'm giving him.

"I just came to talk," he said.

"I don't want to talk," I snap.

Dean comes and sits down next to me anyway. I'm struck with a sudden urge to push him off the roof.

"You haven't been yourself since you got back, Eva. I'm worried about you."

I sigh heavily. "Can we not talk about this now? I'm not really up for a heart to heart at the moment."

"What happened to you in hell that changed you so much?" Dean asks, watching me closely.

I'm still stubbornly focusing on the ground below. "Aren't you always the one who's against chick flick moments? I'm sensing a little hypocrisy here."

"I'm serious, Eva," he says. I can still feel his eyes on me.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I count to ten before opening them and turning to look at Dean. "I was naive, once. And then I got smart, realized how to act to receive as little damage as possible. And then you and Sam lulled me into a false sense of security. Hell opened my eyes again, Dean."

He stays silent, but he's still watching me. His gaze is getting a little too intense, so my eyes flick back to the road.

"I learned a long time ago, and I should've remembered, that you can't trust anybody. And you can't get close to anybody. Because if they don't betray you themselves, they will end up hurting you in the end. You know, before I went to hell, I thought I was in love with Sam. But that just ended up being a liability. They actually had something to use against me down there."

Dean doesn't say anything and the seconds pass slowly. I can't stand not knowing what he's thinking so I look up at him.

He's hiding whatever he's thinking really well. All I see is his regular firm expression observing me carefully.

He finally breaks the long silence before I do. "I've been in this life a lot longer than you have, and I can tell you that's the wrong way to think." He pauses, and I'm about to interrupt when he continues, "If you go too long with nothing to hold on to, you're going to get lost. And when you have no one to keep going for, to try for…" Dean shakes his head. "That's a thousand times worse than how you feel when you lose someone. I promise you."

I scowl and turn away from him.

"I don't think that's how it works," I say just loudly enough for him to hear my while I'm facing away from him.

Dean sighs in resignation. "Here," he says, tapping my arm to get my attention. He's holding out a flask.

"Thanks," I say warily, taking it from him, unscrewing the cap, and taking a few long glugs. The alcohol burns on the way down to my stomach and I cough from the disgusting taste. I take another sip.

"Thought you might need that," he says, nodding towards the flask.

"I do." I keep sipping from it, starting to feel a light buzz.

"You know, after you went downstairs…" Dean starts, but he cuts himself off.

"Yeah?" I ask tiredly. "Were you gonna finish that sentence."

"Nevermind," he says dismissively. "It doesn't matter."

"Just fucking tell me," I growl.

"Woah, touchy," he says, leaning back like I'm going to explode.

"I am not fucking touchy! You're just an asshole!" I tell him angrily.

His face cracks into a smile and he laughs.

I let out a noise of annoyance and twist my mouth into a grimace. I stand up and brush of my pants, tossing the mostly-empty flask down next to Dean before storming over to the side of the building I climbed up on, where there's a downspout going down to the ground.

I hear Dean scramble to his feet and follow me as I start climbing down.

"So where's Sam?" I call up at him as I reach the ground and hop down.

"Probably curled into a ball crying back in the motel room because of the way you're treating him," Dean says as he starts climbing down.

"It's not my fault," I say irritatedly.

"Sure it is," he says as steps onto the ground and turns to face me. "You can't help what helped in hell, but you can at least try to treat the guy a little better. He's sensitive."

"Yeah, well, I hate him. So he'll just have to deal." I start walking towards the front of the diner.

"You know that's not true," Dean says, hurrying to catch up with me.

"Mmhmm."

"Whatever it was in hell that you dealt with was not my brother," he says firmly.

"Yeah, it just doesn't seem that way." There's a pinch in my voice as I think back to the time before I'd gone to hell. The memories are tinged with blood now, from all the times I tried to hold onto them as an anchor when I was getting my skin peeled off or carved to pieces or burnt down to little more than a blackened skeleton. Just to be reset at the end of every day, of course.

But even with that stain on the memories, there's an irresistible desire to go back to how things used to be. It was so easy, splitting all of my burdens with another person. Having someone to look after, and someone to look after me.

"Are we going into the diner?" Dean says suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

"Yeah," I say, like it's obvious. It should be. I mean, there's nowhere else to go, really.

"Why?"

"I'm hungry. That chocolate muffin barely tided me over on the way over here. It was a two-mile walk."

Just as we're about to round the corner to the front of the building, where the door is, there's the sound of a car, and the Impala pulls off the road and into the parking lot. It pulls to a stop in a spot and the purr of the engine cuts off before Sam climbs out.

"Fuck," I grumble as he notices us and starts walking over, keeping his eyes focused firmly on the ground, completely unable to meet mine.

"Great," Dean says, clapping me on the shoulder. "Now the three of us will have a time to talk."


	11. Chapter 11

_Author's Note: This hunt is heavily based on the game Five Nights at Freddy's and the story behind it. It might be a little bit boring if you're familiar with the game, so sorry about that._

_Also, apologies for taking so long with this chapter and keeping you waiting. I've been dealing with some personal stuff. I hope I won't take so long with the next chapter. It'll get back to the main plot soon, I promise!_

* * *

We're sitting in the diner with our plates of pancakes in front of us virtually untouched. Dean is the only one eating, and he's stuffing his face like he can't eat enough. Besides the sounds of Dean's fork scraping against his plate, there's complete silence.

"So did Dean talk to you?" Sam finally says.

"Yeah," I say, staring at him blankly.

He clears his throat awkwardly. "Okay." He leaves it at that, but I know he's going to ask Dean for more details about it later. There's an awkward silence for a few moments before he says out of the blue, "Should we find a hunt?"

I let out a huff of exasperation. "In the middle of all this? You mean Bela trying to find a mysterious object of mass destruction and your missing half-brother aren't enough work?" I say sourly.

"No, it's just… we don't have any leads on that, so we might as well keep working in the meantime," Sam says cautiously. I can tell he's trying not to set me off. Yeah, right, like I'm that easily angered. Well, maybe I am. I do seem jumpier than I usually am around Sam.

"Okay, any ideas?" I say, crossing my arms in front of me on the table.

"Yeah, actually," Sam says, tossing a newspaper on the table in front of us. "I came across this in the newspaper. It's not too far from here, maybe two or three hours away?"

I look at the page it's flipped to. _Teenager Killed in Accident at Local Kid's Restaurant on Dare Gone Awry._ There's a picture of a creepy animatronic chicken staring blankly ahead on the page, a splash of blood across its face.

"Besides the supernaturally creepy chicken, what makes you think this has anything to do with our type of thing? It says it was an accident," I say flatly, tapping on the word _Accident_ in the headline.

"I'm not so sure," Sam says. "The kid was torn to pieces from being stuffed into a spare animal suit. It doesn't seem like something that would happen on accident."

I frown. "Let me see that."

I reach for the newspaper the same time Sam reaches out to push it towards me and I flinch and pull my hand back quickly, heart jumping to my throat.

Sam bites his lip and pulls his hand back, dropping it into his lap dejectedly. Dean swallows the last bite of his pile of pancakes and passes me the newspaper instead.

"Thanks," I say breathlessly, trying to slow my heart's rapid beating. I swallow in an attempt to get a hold of myself, and look at the article.

_Sixteen-year-old Jacob Smith, a student at George Washington High School, was killed Saturday night at approximately 4:30 AM after being sent to sneak into the local kid's restaurant and entertainment center, Donny's. His four friends dared him to take a picture of an animatronic rabbit in the back room of the restaurant. He continued to send texts while walking to the back of the restaurant. His friends received three messages: "This is creepy as hell," "I hear things moving," and "I'm not alone in here I s2g I'm leaving rn," before his communication ceased._

_After half an hour of desperately calling Smith's number and shouting his name around the perimeter of the restaurant, his friends called the police, who arrived at 5:50 AM to discover the grisly remains of the boy stuffed into a spare animatronic suit of a bear held in the back room. Exactly how his death occurred is unclear. Police are speculating that he died after a fall into the suit, but it's also been suggested that there was a killer at the restaurant the night Smith was killed, however unlikely it may sound._

_Donny's has already been losing popularity due to its poorly operating animatronic animals; a child was severely injured by a malfunctioning animatron a few years ago, and the restaurant has received complaints about other animatrons which have been described as "animated corpses" because of their smell and the blood and mucus stains around the eyes._

"Jesus," I say, grimacing in disgust at the description. "That sounds nasty."

"Yeah," Sam says. "But supernatural, right?"

"It says there might have been a killer there," I say skeptically.

"Come on. With the force to kill a kid like that? And what about those creepy animatrons?"

I shrug. "What do you think, Dean?" I ask.

"Hm," he says, pulling the paper towards himself and skimming the article. "Well, it's a good thing I'm done eating, because this ruined my appetite, but I think we should look into it."

I sigh. "Fine. Let's go."

"No need to rush," Dean says, seeming intent on not moving for a while. I glare at him and slide out of the booth and start walking out.

"Hey, are you at least gonna pay for your food?"

"I don't have any money," I call over my shoulder unapologetically. Perks of crawling out of hell: someone pays for your food for a while, at least.

I hear him sigh and toss money down on the table before he and Sam follow me out.

* * *

The town where Donny's is located is not particularly large, nor is it particularly nice. The best places are average at most. And I'm pretty sure there are cockroaches living under the sink of my room at the motel.

Still, as a reporter or agent of some type, I have to look presentable, even if the living conditions aren't great, so I tidy up and get dressed up in my skirt suit (a little dusty and stiff from months without use, but at least the two of them kept my stuff around) before meeting the brothers outside our two rooms.

"You guys got my IDs?" I ask them as I shut the door to my room.

"Yeah, we saved them after you—" Sam hesitates. "They're right here," he finishes, passing me the box that has all my fake IDs in it. I smile and flip open the lid. Dozens of little mes stare back.

But they don't look like me. Me from now, anyway. Most of these were made in the past year or two, and while my face is serious, my eyes are smiling. I look calm and relaxed. Definitely not how I'm feeling now. _Especially_ in such close proximity to Sam.

I close the box and look up at the two of them. "What are we going as today? Reporters?"

"FBI," Dean says, as if it should be obvious.

I roll my eyes. "You two haven't changed a bit. Fine, let's go with the more conspicuous option if you want it."

Stop one: Donny's.

It sounds like their establishment is pretty messed up, given everything that's happened. We did some more research, learned some more background about the place. Most recently, we heard a nighttime security guard they'd hired a few weeks ago had gone missing mysteriously the same night the kid was killed, and the restaurant had narrowly dodged a law suit for failing to file a report.

And then the real kicker is that about ten years ago, five kids had disappeared on the site, allegedly lured into a back room by a man dressed in one of the animal suits. So far we're thinking ghosts animating the animals at the restaurant.

When we enter the restaurant, there are kids running around everywhere, some with pieces of pizza or small toys in their hands. The place is pretty cheesy, with drawings of the animatronic animals put on the walls and balloons at a couple of the tables where some five-year-olds must be celebrating their birthdays. It's weirdly populated for a place with such a bad reputation, but I guess in a town as small as this one, there's not a lot of places to go.

The animatrons themselves are pretty damn disturbing. There's three that I can see right off the bat: a bear, a duck, and a rabbit. They have blank staring eyes, and are sort of bobbing from side to side, sometimes waving at no one in particular.

Sam says what we're all thinking: "Creepy."

"Hey, at least it's not clowns," Dean says, punching Sam's arm lightly and earning himself a death glare before heading over to talk to the person who seems to be in charge, looking out over the restaurant with a watchful eye.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" he says, addressing a tall, serious woman with a headset and in the establishment's uniform. "FBI." All three of us flash our badges simultaneously. "Can we talk to you for a moment?"

"I'm kind of busy, actually," she says, crossing her arms.

"We have some important questions regarding the death of Jacob Smith," Dean continues.

She scowls. "It was an accident, why's the FBI looking into it?"

"Just exploring every option," Sam says like he always does when people ask that question.

"Well, I don't know anything," she says with irritation. "And I have work to do."

"We just have some questions about the animatrons," I say, nodding towards the bear standing a few feet a way from us. "How long have they been around?"

She sighs in exasperation and pushes the microphone of the headphone away from her mouth. "Since this place opened, in the seventies," she replies.

"And you've been getting complaints that they smell like, what was it, 'reanimated carcasses'?"

The woman tsks. "They're old. It's a kid's restaurant. Who knows how much food have been stuffed into their joints?"

I purse my lips. "Okay. And why do you need a night security guard? Is there something valuable that needs to be watched after?"

She nods. "The animatrons. They're free to roam the restaurant at night because their joints lock up if they're left in place for too long, and we have a security guard to make sure nothing happens to them."

"How do they roam around the restaurant?" Dean cuts in.

She shrugs. "Robotics. They used to wander around back in the day, before the accident, but we have to shut them off during the day to keep customers."

"What about the security guard who disappeared on the night that Jacob Smith was killed?" Sam asks. "What happened to him?"

"Walked off on the job, probably," the woman grumbles contemptuously.

"Mind if we have a look around?" I ask.

"I don't think now's a good time," she says with a frown.

"Maybe later?"

"I'd prefer if you didn't."

"We're FBI, ma'am," Sam adds.

She pauses and frowns at us, narrowing her eyes. "Fine," she says, finally caving. "But don't touch anything. And don't bother anybody. And stay away from the office."

"All right," I say exasperatedly.

With a quick glare at the three of us, she clicks her microphone back into place before turning and walking off to shout something at one of the employees.

"What a charmer," Dean mutters. "So, where do we start?"

"The office," I say. "Obviously."


End file.
